Some designs are meant to decorate. This one is meant to confront.

The California Gadsden hoodie and sweatshirt were created for the moments when optimism alone is not enough. When the temperature drops and the pressure ramps up, this is the layer that carries a message people are trying very hard to bury. The roaring bear on the California Republic flag is no longer symbolic nostalgia. It is active. Alert. Fully done with pretending things are fine.

"Don't Tread On Us" is printed across the front because the threat has never been abstract. It shows up in detention centers, surveillance budgets, and laws written to punish the most vulnerable first. This piece does not ask for freedom in the abstract. It demands boundaries in the present tense.

Strange Gang built this hoodie and sweatshirt with the understanding that oppression wears many uniforms. Sometimes it waves a flag. Sometimes it hides behind paperwork. Sometimes it insists it is just doing its job. California has felt all of it. From border violence to criminalized protest to the steady erosion of bodily autonomy, the pressure is constant, even when the headlines move on.

The bear is roaring because patience has limits. This is not a call to nostalgia or state pride for its own sake. It is a reminder that resistance is part of California’s living history, not a marketing slogan. Movements grow here because people refuse to stay quiet when the boot shows up at the door.

This hoodie and sweatshirt are for long nights, hard conversations, and days when being visible feels risky but necessary. For people who understand that freedom is collective, that silence protects the wrong people, and that solidarity is not optional when authoritarianism starts testing the ground.

This is not a costume. It is a warning label. Hands off our lives means exactly that.